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Democrats Don't have the Votes for Immigration "Reform"

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 6:36:09 PM

Sources: Votes lacking for immigration push in Congress

By Dana Bash, CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent
April 24, 2010 10:37 a.m. EDT

Washington (CNN) -- The push for immigration reform may be on the front burner for congressional Democrats, but sources say that ultimately, they believe the issue is unlikely to have enough votes to pass.

Democrats say the goal is to try to take it up in the Senate before discussing the Supreme Court nomination this summer and spend the rest of the session before the midterm election on the politically potent issue of jobs.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/23/immigration.reform.congress/

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Arizona Illegal Immigration Bill

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 6:34:14 PM
Here is the bill that has just passed the Arizona State House and State Senate and signed into law in Arizona:

http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070h.pdf

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McCain Says to obama if You Don't Like New Arizona Illegal Immigration Law, Then Send Troops to the Border

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 6:31:57 PM

McCain to Obama: Send troops to border if you don't like new immigration law

By Ian Swanson - 04/24/10 09:06 AM ET

President Barack Obama should dispatch National Guard troops to the border if he doesn’t like Arizona’s new immigration law, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Friday.

McCain, who endorsed the tough new Arizona law earlier this week, defended it as necessary because of the federal government’s inability to secure the border.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/94111-mccain-to-obama-send-troops-to-the-border-if-you-dont-like-new-immigration-law

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64% Say Judges More Anti-Religious than Founding Fathers Intended

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 6:29:37 PM
64% Say Judges More Anti-Religious Than Founding Fathers Intended

Only 21% of Americans think that rulings by judges in recent years regarding religion in public life have correctly interpreted the U.S. Constitution, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of adults believe the judges’ rulings have been more anti-religious than the Founding Fathers intended. Fifteen percent (15%) aren’t sure.

But only 46% say the U.S. Supreme Court has been too hostile towards religion, a view unchanged from a survey nearly five years ago. Thirteen percent (13%) say the high court has been too friendly towards religion, down 10 points from the earlier survey. Thirty-three percent (33%) feel neither characterization of the court is accurate.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/april_2010/64_say_judges_more_anti_religious_than_founding_fathers_intended


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Giannoulias' Family Bank was Seized by the Goverment

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 11:14:03 AM

Broadway Bank’s failure a twin blow for Giannoulias

Seizure 1 of 7 in Illinois during busy day for FDIC  

By Becky Yerak, Tribune reporter

9:32 p.m. CDT, April 23, 2010

Broadway Bank, the family-owned lender that helped launch U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias' political career, was seized by government regulators Friday night, one of seven Illinois institutions taken over and sold to healthier companies.

The failure of Chicago-based Broadway, which was unable to raise the $85 million it needed to remain independent, was anticipated, and its worsening health has weighed on Giannoulias' Democratic bid for President Barack Obama's old Senate seat. The bank had been struggling in recent years with real estate loans gone bad, losing $75 million last year.

Giannoulias worked for his father at Broadway before entering politics, and during his successful run for state treasurer in 2006 he used his banking experience as one of his chief qualifications. But in the Senate race, he has tried to distance himself from the bank's troubles.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0424-broadway-bank--20100423,0,1669391.story
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Rep. Issa Asks SEC Inspector General to Examine Goldman Suit

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 11:12:33 AM

SEC Inspector General Asked to Examine Goldman Suit (Update1)


By Jesse Westbrook

April 23 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro faces an investigation into whether politics drove the agency’s decision to sue Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for fraud.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, asked SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz to determine whether the agency’s April 16 lawsuit was timed to bolster the Obama administration’s push to overhaul financial rules. Schapiro said on April 21 that neither the White House nor Congress have any influence on SEC enforcement actions.

“The circumstances of the filing and subsequent events fueled suspicion that the commission, or one or more of its officials or employees, may have engaged in unauthorized disclosure of commission proceedings,” Issa said today in a letter to Kotz seeking a probe. Kotz, in a Fox television interview, said he would do an investigation at Issa’s request.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-23/sec-inspector-general-asked-to-examine-agency-s-goldman-suit.html



Tags: Issa   obama   sec  
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'Andy Stern's Debts'

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 11:10:46 AM

VERNUCCIO: Andy Stern's debts

SEIU leader swims away while his organization sinks


By F. Vincent Vernuccio

Purple may be the official color of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), but Andy Stern is leaving the union deep in the red. Last week, he surprised the labor community by announcing his resignation as president of SEIU. Mr. Stern has claimed victories in helping pass health care legislation and getting President Obama elected, but his impact within his own organization shows gaping budget deficits and massive underfunding of pensions.

SEIU has seen its liabilities skyrocket during the past decade. The union's liabilities totaled $7,625,832 in 2000. By 2009, they had increased almost by a factor of 16, to $120,893,259. Meanwhile, SEIU's assets barely tripled, growing from $66,632,631 in 2000 to $187,664,763 in 2009. A significant portion of SEIU's current assets are from IOUs from hard-up locals.

SEIU is $85 million in debt, down from its 2008 high of $102 million, and has been forced to lay off employees. Mr. Stern has led protests against Bank of America, calling for the firing of Chief Executive Ken Lewis. Yet the union owes $80 million to Bank of America and $5 million to Amalgamated Bank, which is owned by the rival union Unite-Here.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/23/andy-sterns-debts/


Tags: unions   debt  
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NSA Suspends Collecting Data

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 7:12:22 AM

NSA Suspends Collecting Data, Worsens Intelligence Gap

By Marc Thiessen

April 20, 2010, 4:52 pm

The Washington Post reports this week that a “special federal court that oversees domestic surveillance has raised concerns about the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) collection of certain types of electronic data, prompting the agency to suspend collecting it.”

The Post added: “The data under discussion are records associated with various kinds of communication, but not their content. Examples of this ‘metadata’ include the origin, destination and path of an e-mail; the phone numbers called from a particular telephone; and the Internet address of someone making an Internet phone call. It was not clear what kind of data had provoked the court’s concern.”

Republicans in Congress are complaining that the hold-up creates a dangerous intelligence gap. An intelligence official quoted in the article concurs, declaring: “Every day, every week that goes by, there’s just one more week of information that we’re not collecting. You sit there and say, ‘This is unbelievable that we have this gap.’”

Apparently the NSA stopped gathering the information in December or January—which means we are now in our fourth or fifth month of the delay.

http://blog.american.com/?p=12913

Tags: Terrorism   NSA  
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'Falling for the Spin of the Gitmo Bar'

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 7:10:23 AM

Falling for the Spin of the Gitmo Bar

Why do reporters keep whitewashing the records of al Qaeda detainees?

BY Thomas Joscelyn

April 26, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 30

On March 27, the Christian Science Monitor published an article (“Defending due process for Guantánamo detainees”) extolling the virtues of the attorneys who have rushed to the defense of the detainees. It portrays the attorneys as engaging in a noble defense of “due process” rights in the face of widespread threats and criticism. Undoubtedly the attorneys have faced criticism from some corridors, but for the most part they have been lionized in the press, leading to hopelessly skewed media coverage in which dangerous jihadists are presented as lambs and the U.S. military and government as villains. 

The Monitor story featured attorney Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, who has represented, pro bono, a number of Guantánamo detainees. One of his clients is a former detainee named Juma al Dossari. He was captured near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in December 2001, transported to Guantánamo, and held there until being repatriated to Saudi Arabia on July 15, 2007.

Colangelo-Bryan says he and al Dossari quickly became friends, engaging in playful banter about the attorney’s cheapness and single life. During one meeting early in the relationship, the Monitor reports, “They told jokes, talked about women, [and] shared childhood stories.” Colangelo-Bryan even made sure on one occasion to bring his friend a cheesecake from Junior’s, a well-known Brooklyn eatery, all the way to Cuba.

The Monitor’s readers are told little of why Dossari was being held at Guantánamo. He was, the story says, “rumored to be an al Qaeda recruiter in Buffalo, N.Y., a jihadi in Chechnya, [and] a member of a Muslim fighting force in Bosnia.” But there is supposedly no reason to worry about any of this because:

When Colangelo-Bryan opened the files, he didn’t see much to prosecute. “There were no transcripts of phone calls that had been intercepted involving [Dossari]. There were no photographs of him with bin Laden. There were no fingerprints on incriminating materials. There was really nothing that any judge would consider reliable evidence,” he says.

But according to the FBI, Colangelo-Bryan’s summary is false. It’s true there is no picture of Dossari with Osama, but few al Qaeda members have ever been awarded that privilege, and it is absurd to claim that such evidence is required. The FBI file contains plenty of other evidence against Dossari, including the testimony of convicted al Qaeda trainees.

http://weeklystandard.com/articles/falling-spin-gitmo-bar


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Video: Montage of Democrats Attacking Tea Partiers

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 7:04:45 AM
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Wall Street Regulation Bill Set for a Vote in the Senate on Monday

Posted by Defend America on Saturday, April 24, 2010 7:03:46 AM

Votes in doubt as Reid sets Wall St. showdown

By Alexander Bolton - 04/22/10 08:49 PM ET

The Senate has scheduled a showdown early next week on Wall Street reform, and lawmakers familiar with negotiations say a deal is unlikely by then.

Democrats have set a 5 p.m. vote for Monday to begin consideration of the bill, giving negotiators only four more days to reach a deal on a document exceeding 1,400 pages.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/93941-votes-in-doubt-as-sen-harry-reid-sets-monday-for-showdown-on-wall-street
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Chris Christie Should Not be Praised

Posted by Defend America on Friday, April 23, 2010 9:19:44 PM
Many on the right have been praising the current governor of New Jersey Republican Chris Christie. Publications that I value and respect like National Review have written wonderful things about the current governor, but his actions so far has shown anything but promise for the future of New Jersey. He campaigned as a conservative against his opponent, conservative Steve Lonegan. Well, his actions so far in office show that he is no conservative, but instead he is a liberal and even more liberal than former governor Jon Corzine on many issues. Paul Mulshine, a conservative columnist for the New Jersey Star Ledger has written extensively on Christie and all the lies that he has said and the horrid actions that he has done so far in his first few months in office. Here is just another column showing just how bad Christie is for the state of New Jersey:

N.J. school budgets went down but property taxes will be going up

By Paul Mulshine/The Star Ledger

April 22, 2010, 5:16AM

That was quite a show of voter outrage at the polls Tuesday. Voters rejected an even bigger share of budgets than in 1976, the prior record year.

And you know what happened then.

If you don’t, I’ll refresh your memory. A few months later, New Jersey got its first income tax. The Trenton crowd assured us the new tax would solve the state’s property tax problem. We all know how that worked out.

Will things work out any better this time? Nope. Property tax bills will still skyrocket this summer. And they’re likely to keep rising for the rest of Chris Christie’s term.

How do I know? Well as I’ve warned, with Christie you have to watch what he does, not what he says. And last week, at the same time he was making all those nice-sounding noises about standing up for the taxpayer, he was also busy breaking yet another promise.

That was his pledge not to borrow money without voter approval. When Christie squared off with Jon Corzine last fall, the then-governor defended his 2008 decision to authorize $3.9 billion in borrowing for school construction without a referendum.

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2010/04/nj_school_budgets_went_down_bu.html




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Video: SEIU Leads Pro-Tax Hike Rally and Chant "Raise My Taxes"

Posted by Defend America on Friday, April 23, 2010 6:34:06 PM
Via Breitbart.tv:



Tags: unions   tax  
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'Would the EPA Stop Torturing Black People?'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, April 23, 2010 6:31:05 PM

April 22, 2010 12:00 A.M.

EPA’s New CO2 Rules: Bad News for Racial Minorities
Until the science is truly settled, would the EPA please kindly stop torturing black people?

The Environmental Protection Agency wants to curtail greenhouse gases. Black Americans should be afraid. Very afraid.

Five civil-rights organizations recently condemned the EPA’s plans to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions as part of its war on so-called “global warming.” These groups’ leaders argue that the EPA’s December 7 “Endangerment Finding” and pending anti-CO2 regulations will slam Americans hard and blacks and other minorities hardest.

“President Obama wants to price us out of energy,” Harry Alford of the National Black Chamber of Commerce told Public Radio International. “This is a war on how we live in America, and don’t regard it lightly. We need to fight them, we need to fight them hard, fight them fierce.” Alford represents some 100,000 black-owned companies.

A recent Affordable Power Alliance study foresees dire consequences from EPA restrictions on traditional energy production as it chases the chimera of global warming.

http://article.nationalreview.com/432133/epas-new-cosub2sub-rules-bad-news-for-racial-minorities/deroy-murdock
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'Goldman Sachs and the Left'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, April 23, 2010 6:29:47 PM

April 23, 2010 4:00 A.M.

Goldman Sachs and the Left
An impressionistic study in cronyism.

President Obama was in the Big Apple on Thursday, for another lecture on big, bad Wall Street. The dutiful, third-row appearance by Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’s CEO, said it all: More than any other firm, Goldman is confident in its ability to cozy up to the Democrats that regulate it, and to favorably shape the current congressional negotiations on financial reform.

“They’ve been wired through the Clinton years, the Bush years, and before that, they have a lot of heavy hitters,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.) tells us. “They’re well connected. . . . They’re aggressive.” DeFazio, along with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), urged the Securities and Exchange Commission this week to widen its current investigation of the firm to include securities underwritten by Goldman and backed by American International Group, the bailed-out insurer, to probe for “fraudulent conduct” and “ill-gotten gains.”

“From the beginning, I’ve thought that the deal Goldman Sachs got via Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on their bad bets through AIG kind of stunk,” DeFazio says. “They got $13 billion from AIG last year. I’m looking for any legal way to recoup that money for the people of the United States.”

With former senior aides to Obama, Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and other Democrats on its payroll, Goldman isn’t fretting about DeFazio and company. As Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner reports, four of the five in-house lobbyists at Goldman were Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill, with the remaining one a contributor to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Directing Goldman’s Washington shop is Michael Paese, Frank’s former go-to committee staffer, who had responsibility for committee policy related to the banking, securities, and insurance industries. One of Paese’s deputies is Ken Connolly, a veteran of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. And this week, Paese’s bosses enlisted Greg Craig, Obama’s former White House counsel, through the law firm Skadden Arps, just days after Goldman was charged with fraud by the SEC.

http://article.nationalreview.com/432367/goldman-sachs-and-the-left/robert-costa
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